Here are the last two missives I ever received from his dear, kind hand:—
5 Hyde Park Place, London, W., Friday, January 14, 1870.
My Dear Fields: We live here (opposite the Marble Arch) in a charming house until the 1st of June, and then return to Gad's. The Conservatory is completed, and is a brilliant success;--but an expensive one!
I read this afternoon at three,--a beastly proceeding which I particularly hate,--and again this day week at three. These morning readings particularly disturb me at my book-work; nevertheless I hope, please God, to lose no way on their account. An evening reading once a week is nothing. By the by, I recommenced last Tuesday evening with the greatest brilliancy.
I should be quite ashamed of not having written to you and my dear Mrs. Fields before now, if I didn't know that you will both understand how occupied I am, and how naturally, when I put my papers away for the day, I get up and fly. I have a large room here, with three fine windows, overlooking the Park,--unsurpassable for airiness and cheerfulness.
You saw the announcement of the death of poor dear Harness. The circumstances are curious. He wrote to his old friend the Dean of Battle saying he would come to visit him on that day (the day of his death). The Dean wrote back: "Come next day, instead, as we are obliged to go out to dinner, and you will be alone." Harness told his sister a little impatiently that he must go on the first-named day,--that he had made up his mind to go, and MUST. He had been getting himself ready for dinner, and came to a part of the staircase whence two doors opened,--one, upon another level passage; one, upon a flight of stone steps. He opened the wrong door, fell down the steps, injured himself very severely, and died in a few hours.
You will know--I don't--what Fechter's success is in America at the time of this present writing. In his farewell performances at the Princess's he acted very finely. I thought the three first acts of his Hamlet very much better than I had ever thought them before,--and I always thought very highly of them. We gave him a foaming stirrup cup at Gad's Hill. Forster (who has been ill with his bronchitis again) thinks No. 2 of the new book (Edwin Drood) a clincher,--I mean that word (as his own expression) for Clincher. There is a curious interest steadily working up to No. 5, which requires a great deal of art and self-denial. I think also, apart from character and picturesqueness, that the young people are placed in a very novel situation. So I hope--at Nos. 5 and 6 the story will turn upon an interest suspended until the end.
I can't believe it, and don't, and won't, but they say Harry's twenty-first birthday is next Sunday. I have entered him at the Temple just now; and if he don't get a fellowship at Trinity Hall when his time comes, I shall be disappointed, if in the present disappointed state of existence.
I hope you may have met with the little touch of Radicalism I gave them at Birmingham in the words of Buckle? With pride I observe that it makes the regular political traders, of all sorts, perfectly mad. Sich was my intentions, as a grateful acknowledgment of having been misrepresented.
I think Mrs. ----'s prose very admirable, but I don't believe it! No, I do not. My conviction is that those Islanders get frightfully bored by the Islands, and wish they had never set eyes upon them!